The musings of a bearded earthling

Star Trek: A Future Without Money?

Yes please. Where do I sign up? I’ve long thought that humanity would be better off without money. Whether this personal belief arose from my adoption of anarchism or whether I adopted anarchism because of the belief I no longer remember. Regardless, the future I wanted was a future in which humans were less concerned with the accumulation of wealth as well as the accumulation of stuff. Such a focus was holding us back from not only our individual potential but our collective potential as well.

During the same time that I was evolving into an anarchist and an activist I was also becoming a fan of Star Trek. In particular it was the then active series, The Next Generation that had my attention. Something I picked up on at some point along the way was that money and material possessions seemed irrelevant to the characters. I don’t recall now if it was explicitly discussed in the course of the show but it seemed to be the case that money simply didn’t exist. At least not on the Enterprise. The material needs of the crew were never an issue. But even more than that, the culture of the Enterprise, while organized as a hierarchy, was also egalitarian in many ways. There seemed to be an emphasis on cooperation even as personal, self development was encouraged and explored. From the arts to sciences, the crew were always engaged in self development. What was depicted was a version of humanity that evolved far beyond where we find ourselves today. It presented a better vision, an ideal, of what humanity could be. This was the future I wanted, this was the kind of humanity I hoped for.

At some point in the mid 90s I remember watching this particular Star Trek movie, Star Trek: First Contact and there it was a scene in which Captain Jean-Luc Picard explained that “The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.” There it was. Not just implied but explicitly stated. Yes! Exactly. And this, again, Picard from the episode “The Neutral Zone”:

“That’s what all this is about. A lot has changed in past 300 years. People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of things. We have eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. We’ve grown out of our infancy.”

This particular aspect of the Star Trek Universe is explored in a new book, Trekonomics, by Manu Saadia:

Yet, Star Trek does not owe its enduring popularity and its place in our collective imagination to its aliens or to its technological speculations. What makes it so unique, and so exciting, is its radical optimism about humanity’s future as a society: in other words, utopia.

In Star Trek, humanity has reached abundance. Thanks to scientific progress and good governance, the Federation has overcome the social ills commonly associated with the uneven distribution of material wealth. The citizens of the Federation no longer work to sustain and provide for themselves — they find meaning in more elevated pursuits.”

I’ve not read it yet but I’ve just started it. From the Introduction:

To this day, the greatest sense of wonder I experience from Star Trek comes not from the starships and the stars, new life and new civilizations, but from its depiction of an uncompromisingly humanist, galaxy-spanning utopian society.

We are a far, far cry from that version of humanity. But that’s okay. Because, again, the point is, we can all be better humans. The world is what we make it everyday. We can choose to go with the flow which today is largely one of destruction and discordance or we can, like the characters of the Star Trek universe, strive to improve ourselves and the lives of those around us. We don’t need to be paid to be better humans, we can just do it. In fact, that’s a part of the point. Striving to be better for the sake of being better, without financial reward, is, in and of itself an immediate improvement. Even more, if our striving is cooperative and includes those around us. This is the world I want to create.